Political prisoners are tortured, attacked and convicted in Iran. Urgent call for action

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Criminal convictions for “rebellion” against five political prisoners after months of interrogation and torture in Evin Prison

Brutal attack on prisoners in Khorramabad, transfer to solitary confinement and sentence of martyr’s father to 6 years in prison

Urgent call for immediate action to save the lives of political prisoners

On Tuesday, May 14, the regime’s judiciary charged five political prisoners – Abolhassan Montazer, Pouya Ghobadi, Mohammad Taghavi, Vahid Bani-Amirian and Babak Alipour – with “rebellion” and membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) after months of interrogation and torture in Section 209 of Evin Prison. This trumped-up charge carries severe penalties, including execution or long prison terms.

Abolhassan Montazer, 65, was previously arrested and detained in the 1980s and again in 2018 and 2020. His last arrest was in January 2024. He suffers from heart, lung and kidney diseases as well as arthritis.

Pouya Ghobadi, 32, an electrical engineer, was arrested at the Chaldoran border in March 2024 and transferred to Evin. He had been arrested twice before.

Mohammad Taghavi, who was arrested in March 2024, previously served three years in prison for his ties to the PMOI.

Vahid Bani-Amirian, 32, who holds a master’s degree in management, was arrested in January 2024. He has been in prison for a total of four years since 2017.

Babak Alipour, 33, a law graduate, was arrested in January 2024. He had already been arrested in Rasht in November 2018 and served four years in prison.

In another development on May 20, Branch 2 of the Karaj Revolutionary Court sentenced Mashallah Karami, the father of 2022 uprising martyr Mohammad Mehdi Karami, to five years in prison for “gathering and colluding with the intent to commit a crime against national security” and one year for “propaganda against the regime.” Mashallah Karami was arrested on August 22, 2023, in a security forces raid. The same court also sentenced the family lawyer of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, who was arrested last August, to six years in prison for another inhumane act.

In another criminal act, Khamenei’s henchmen in Khorramabad Central Prison, on the orders of the prison director and the head of prison security, forcibly transferred several prisoners protesting against the water closure to solitary confinement. In this attack, several protesting prisoners had their arms and legs broken. In addition, two brothers and supporters of the PMOI, Mohammad and Mehdi Khodakarami, were exiled from solitary confinement in Khorramabad Central Prison to Parsilon Prison in the same city.

The Iranian Resistance urges the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council and other relevant UN bodies, as well as the European Union and its member states, to take immediate action to save the lives of the five prisoners accused of rebellion and to secure the release of all political prisoners. It also stresses the need for an international commission of inquiry to visit Iranian prisons and meet with the prisoners.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

27 April 2024